Acceptable Risk
by Ecri
Summary: Explores questions raised by episode 9, Henry and the Terrible...Day. Spoilers.


This is a story suggested to me by the events in the last episode that aired "Henry and the Terrible…Day". There are definite spoilers for that episode. It is NOT my only plot bunny based on that ending, and I'm working on writing the others as well.

My Own Worst Enemy

Acceptable Risk by Ecri

Norah Skinner slipped the 9mm back into her purse and exited the room slowly. She took the elevator back to her office and placed the bag on the floor by her desk. She had been careful. She knew there was no way anyone would know that she'd done it, but she was fast becoming tired of cleaning up this mess. The worst part was that the mess wasn't really cleaned up yet.

There were few who could get away with this, and she knew she was risking a lot, but she couldn't have Edward be fixed yet. She had managed it rather neatly, she thought, but there was always a chance of being caught.

Her motivation was not something either Edward or Henry would understand.

Edward was the best agent Janus had. That was undisputed. All the agents had an impressive success rate as far as their missions went, but it was Edward whose split identity had been the most successful, at least by her standards. Henry was as real a person as Edward. While the others were good, there was a certain _je ne sais quoi_ about Henry. He seemed _more _real. He seemed _more_ invested in the life he lived.

She wouldn't kid herself into thinking that Edward cared about Henry's family, though the one thing he'd said about Henry needing the family so that Edward wouldn't need one had been provocative. She'd dissected that thought until she realized there wasn't a lot she could get out of it without speaking more professionally with Edward, and Edward would never permit her to analyze him.

There was the possibility that Edward could learn to care. In a sense, Angie was his wife and Jack and Ruthy were his children. There was always the chance that he could become more like Henry. Henry had certainly been able to adopt certain aspects of Edward's personality. Raymond had claimed that Edward had lied to him about having killed Ellen/Paula, but she knew that had been Henry pretending to be Edward. Edward would have killed Paula if he thought it necessary. Henry valued life and was horrified at the death and destruction Edward dealt out on a regular basis. He would take the chance of being caught lying to Raymond if he thought it would buy Ellen/Paula a chance.

Henry had asked her once where she expected this thing with Edward to go. 'This thing' was her so-called relationship with a man who, as Henry put it, didn't officially exist.

The chip had broken spontaneously as far as she could tell. There was always the possibility that someone had done it, but she wasn't privy to any plots or schemes. She had killed Tony and wiped out the computer trail of information that would tell Mavis how to repair the broken chip in Edward's head to keep things as they were.

The truth was she did love Edward, but she had seen Henry's devotion to his wife in their 'sessions' long before the chip had broken. He loved Angie and his children. He was utterly devoted to her. She had begun to think that if Henry were part of Edward and Henry was capable of that kind of love, didn't it stand to reason that Edward was as well? He had become an agent out of a need for vengeance born of the love of his parents. Surely there was room for someone else in his life.

It was pathetic, she knew, but she couldn't help it. She loved Edward, and that had been the impetus for helping Henry.

Truthfully, there was an unexpected result. The longer Henry knew about this alternate life, the longer he had to improvise and pretend to be a part of this in front of Trumbull and the other agents, the more she felt stirrings she had not expected. Henry, it seemed was becoming more like Edward. She wondered if that were a consequence of having the chip breaking or if it were just that Edward's personality was slowly reasserting itself. It could be that the on/off switch wasn't the only thing that was broken. It was certainly conceivable that the differences between Edward and Henry would continue to blur until there was only one personality left. Was the switch the only part that broke, or was it rather that, now that the switch was broken, the walls between the two personalities were breaking down? Would Henry disappear one day—or would Edward?

The third possibility was that neither Henry nor Edward would survive and instead there would be a melding of the two personalities, a sort of hybrid Henry/Edward. What would that person be like? Would he be Edward enough to love her or would he be Henry enough to stay with Angie? Would he have too many conflicting emotions to be able to handle being an agent? Would he be someone else entirely?

She sighed as she began to type up her notes on the Edward/Henry successes, failures and surprises. There was so much to learn, and she had no way of knowing how much time she had before someone put an end to her experiment and, possibly, to her.


End file.
